A voice from beyond the grave
One of the major highlights of this year’s London FrightFest is Jon Spira’s latest documentary on (dare we say it?!) “King of Horror” Sir Christopher Lee. Of course, the noble actor was much, much more than that and, by all accounts, The Life and Death of Christopher Lee provides what feels like a definitive exploration of his career in a fun and innovative way — delving into his aristocratic and operatic Italian roots, wartime experiences in the British military, post-war Nazi-hunting adventures.... and even his contribution to heavy metal music. Not only are we presented with a marionette of the man himself providing an engaging narration from beyond the grave (courtesy of Peter Serafinowicz) but also some wonderful flourishes of animated segments carefully placed throughout as family members and respected filmmakers (Joe Dante, Peter Jackson, John Landis and many more) reflect and share their own stories of the legendary actor. Jon recently took a welcome break to discuss the development of this incredible project...
I’m interested in how long Christopher Lee’s life took to research before you even put a pen to paper.
To be honest, I was writing from the get-go and sometimes the research was more about confirming or re-shaping. My producer Hank Starrs gave me a couple of months with no hassle to get the first draft together, so the research and writing kind of went hand-in-hand.
What was the initial conversation during the early stages of proposing such a project and how many people were onboard from the offset?
It always starts with myself and Hank and we both have to be really excited about an idea before it goes forward. This project, in particular, was kind of a weird project in how quickly it took off. One of the broadcasters that we work with asked us (quite specifically) if we had anything to propose based on a single iconic British person. Christopher Lee was my immediate response and they gave an immediate “Yes”. We had only just finished making our TV series Reel Britannia, which was a lot of work and had burned us both out. And so, I found myself spending days just lying on the sofa watching old episodes of This Is Your Life. Like, endless episodes. The Christopher Lee one came on and I was just hooked, not just for his story but for his vulnerability. He clearly didn’t like surprises and seemed so anxious — it was just amazing to see that side of him. That’s what hooked me.
Writer and director Jon Spira with a familiar friend
This is a highly respectable piece of work with key family members involved. How did you approach the estate of Christopher Lee and how fundamental was this for you in moving forward on the project?
I should say that it’s by no means an ‘official’ film. Ideally, you always want the family’s blessing for something like this, but you don’t need their permission. It can be a good thing or a bad thing in a number of ways, but it would be rude to not even let them know your intentions. We were very lucky that members of the family were very supportive in various ways and to get Dame Harriet Walter (his niece) for an interview was fantastic.
I’m interested to hear about the writing process. Was it based on any memoirs, or did you purely tap into the spirit and personality of Christopher Lee based on his interviews and accounts?
I’m actually really glad you asked that because I think a lot of people don’t realise that the narration is a screenplay or written at all. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to show Peter in the studio at the beginning of the film, and why the puppet was important. But still, some people have thought the narration is actual audio of Lee, which we found... or think it’s a direct adaptation of his autobiography. I think I took only one or two actual quotes from his book, everything else was about kind of manifesting an evocation of him based on what people thought he might be and who — to me — he seemed to want to be seen as.
Family portraits. The documentary shares both career and intimate snapshots of Lee as a child and his own family; wife Birgit Krøncke and their daughter Christina
What was the key material you delved into?
There are two essential books — his autobiography, which has been published under different titles and constantly re-edited over the years — and Jonathan Rigby’s official book of Lee’s screen work, which they worked together on. Jonathan later joined the project as an interviewee and consultant.
Between Sarah Currant, the senior librarian at the BFI and Dr Jo Botting — who was our official BFI consultant — I also amassed a pile of hundreds of interviews with Lee from all stages of his career. I just totally immersed myself in that stuff and eventually, I had a voice in my head. I had a really clear notion of his speech patterns; how he would say anything and what his view would probably be of something. In fact, one of the frustrating things was that Lee himself — left to his own devices — would have been a terrible narrator because, especially as he aged, he was not great at staying on subject. You could ask him a question and ten minutes later, he’d still be talking but about a tangent of a tangent of a tangent and the original question would just go unanswered. So, in a way, the concise nature of the narration is quite unlike Lee. But it’s the Lee I created for this film.
Lords of the Ring. Peter Jackson shares his stories of Lee
An interesting thing that developed was that, in real life, Lee controlled his own narrative obsessively and not always truthfully. So, I realised that what I wanted to do was to tell two separate stories. Firstly, the narration tells a version completely faithful to Lee’s own accounts in interviews and memoirs, whereas the interviewees — all of whom knew him personally — often fill out the story in ways he might have objected to. In the balance of everything, I think we found something close to the truth, but there were several moments where Jonathan Rigby would send me notes on the evolving script saying “This definitely isn’t true” and I’d reply “But it was his truth” — so in the film, Jonathan, along with the others, sometimes offer a different interpretation of the story.
Were the ideas of all the different elements at play — from animation to puppetry — something that evolved or there from the offset?
I just wanted it to feel fantastical from the get-go. I wanted it to have a fairytale feel but also to kind of convey the colours and textures of the eras of film that he worked through — from the post-war drabness to the rich Gothic, to the more lurid and exploitational, to the trippy European sixties stuff, and the cheesy Hollywood seventies. There was just so much fun to be had and I wanted it to feel like each era was a movement and distinct. Also, as Hank — the consummate indie producer — will tell you, anything is cheaper than archive. Our amazing co-producer Chloe is so well-versed in emerging talent and so, along with the incredibly well-established animators we had onboard, she found us a crop of fresh graduates who are just working in cutting-edge styles. One of my favourite sequences in the film is his experience in France as a young man watching the last ever death by guillotine. I couldn’t even tell you how that animation is achieved — I have no idea — it’s so dream-like and haunting and every pixel feels alive.
“ One of my favourite sequences
in the film is his experience in France
as a young man watching the last
ever death by guillotine.”
— Jon Spira
My original plans for the narration didn’t involve puppetry. I wanted to do something digitally, inspired by a TV commercial from about 20 years ago in which the comedian Bob Monkhouse, who had been dead for 4 years, stood in a graveyard and warned viewers to get checked for prostate cancer. It was all done using vocal impersonators and digitally manipulating real footage of him… and it’s terrific. You can see it on YouTube. So, I wanted to do that but with Lee sat in a crypt telling his story. We did some tests, but it didn’t work. You can get away with it in a 30-second advert because there’s a lot of fast editing, to have him sat talking directly at you for even a whole sentence was hard to achieve. And, of course, there were ethical issues. It just didn’t feel right. I think Hank came up with the concept of using a puppet and then the idea of a marionette just seemed amazing and once he found Andy Gent at Arch Model Studios — who has worked closely with Wes Anderson over the years — it was just perfect. But, to summarise your question, with Hank and I everything is an evolution and, therefore, we like to stay really open to the process of making a film. It’s exciting.
I adore all the talent involved in helping bring this documentary to life from the puppet of the man himself to award-winning stop-motion animator Astrid Goldsmith and artist Dave McKean providing some of the segments. How did you go about bringing all the various creatives on board?
As I said, Hank found Andy and we knew it was a fit from the first meeting. His team at Arch are just amazing and really collaborative... but also just instinctually great. I’ve known Astrid Goldsmith for more than 20 years. We share a godson, who just turned 18. I’ve always wanted to work with her and was so thrilled to be able to on this one together. She is one of the most talented people I’ve ever been lucky enough to know and she’s also just a brilliant, funny, intelligent, wonderful person. So that was amazing.
Dave McKean — to cut a long story short — ordered a copy of a book I wrote a few years ago about Georges Méliès and, having his contact details, I sent him a note because I’d lost a close friend to suicide and that friend had been obsessed with Dave’s work. So, I just wanted to write to him to kind of just put my friend’s name in front of him as some kind of posthumous gesture to that friend. Dave very graciously replied and mentioned that he’d wished he’d known about the book when it was in development as he would have enjoyed working on it and said that if I ever had any projects come up that I thought he might be into, to let him know. So, I let him know about this one and he was into it. Anyone familiar with Dave’s work knows that he’s a genius. We were thrilled to have him onboard.
We also welcomed back 2000AD illustrator Simon Coleby, who we’ve worked with a lot over the years, to bring Lee’s military adventures to life. The opening titles were by Panz, otherwise known as Andrew Gill who had done a lot of animation work for us on Reel Britannia and then the rest were discovered by our other producer Chloe.
Life-long friends. Director John Landis reminisces
How involved were you in directing these segments or did you give them complete free reign?
Well, they were each given a tightly edited piece of narration that they had to work to, so that was a form of constraint. I’ll be honest, with Dave McKean, we just said: “Here are the animated sections, which one do you want?” He had initially wanted a fairly short scene as he had a lot of other work on but once he went through them all he picked the longest and the one that I had secretly hoped he would want to bring to life. I gave him no direction whatsoever. He is the director of that section. He blended live-action with animation and even scored the section himself.
It was, honestly, much the same with the others. I had some specific stylistic briefs. For example, with Astrid’s section, I knew what I wanted to be happening on screen in terms of a descent through a family tree and I knew I wanted it in the Gilliam style of animation, but that was as far as the brief went and that was probably the most specific brief I gave. The greatest lesson you can learn as a director is to hire brilliant people and then let them be brilliant. I’m always hands-off at the beginning. Occasionally you have to step in and ask for changes to help elements fit together and help the film overall… but that wasn’t a problem on this project. I wouldn’t claim to have “directed” any of those sequences.
Reanimated. Dave McKean is one of many artists who helps bring Christopher Lee back to life through animation
How did you come to the decision of casting Peter Serafinowicz as the voice of the Christopher Lee marionette?
Sheer gut instinct. He’s one of the greatest British impersonators and his natural voice has all of those sonorous tones that Lee had. We didn’t even hear his version of Lee until the moment he sat down in the studio for his first section. I should also say that there is a fucking world of difference between doing an impersonation — which is usually satirical and exaggerated and brief — to genuinely evoking the voice and character of another human being for sustained periods of performance. Peter did a fantastic performance.
This is a vastly different and even more engaging documentary than some of your earlier work. Do you feel that this latest film has taken your filmmaking to the next level?
I guess I’ll take that as a compliment but, quite honestly, “Fuck you” [laughs] — all of my documentaries have been engaging! I’m glad you engaged so well with this one… but at the end of the day, every one of my films is different.
I should have worded that better! [laughs] I’ve engaged with them all so far, even your book Videosyncratic: A Book About Life in Video Shops, which really captures your sense of humour and sheer love of cinema. I’m currently halfway through the series Reel Britannia, which I’m savouring — it’s that good. Coming back to my appreciation of this latest film, I think it’s because of all these other elements at play that you have discussed but you’re right, it’s subjective and certainly more about how different each subject is… and all in their own remarkable ways.
You never know if, or how, a viewer will engage with your work and frequently it’s on a level that you never intended or even noticed. It’s the same with music — we all have our relationships with certain songs, and they have great meaning to us but probably those meanings would confuse and surprise their authors.
“… ultimately, like every doc
I’ve made, unavoidably, it ends
up being about empathy.”
— Jon Spira
It’s really not that different from any of my films if you know me and the things that interest me. It’s talking heads-heavy because I love the process and adventure of controlled, intimate interviews. It’s about the world of performing arts. And ultimately, like every doc I’ve made, unavoidably, it ends up being about empathy. My one mantra — which I have used to bully and annoy every editor I have ever worked with — is “Feelings over facts”. There’s no such thing as truth, only perspective, and if you care to indulge someone’s perspective and find out how they reached it, you achieve empathy.
Truth!
Before I made my first doc, I would have absolutely scoffed at the idea that I was “interested” in empathy but every damn one of them comes back to that. Always a different version of it, though, so that’s good. Has this film taken my filmmaking to the next level? I don’t really know what that means to be honest. It’s no better or worse than anything I’ve done before. It’s just different stylistically, or aesthetically, or maybe we just hired brilliant artists to break up the monotony of narration/talking heads.
Heavy Metal King. Lee's final album was CHARLEMAGNE: THE OMENS OF DEATH, a Heavy Metal sequel to his album CHARLEMAGNE: BY THE SWORD AND CROSS, arranged by Judas Priest's Richie Faulkner
Aside from learning all about Christopher Lee, what else do you wish people to take away from the documentary?
If people take anything at all from it, then that’s great. We really all just want people to enjoy it and be awed at how amazing Christopher Lee was. But to indulge my own pretension and answer your question truthfully... the reason I wanted to make the film is because I think that Christopher Lee has come to represent something important in cinema — all of his performances, in some way, conveyed power and authority, aristocracy, intelligence, erudition, class, confidence. He was tall, and well-spoken and handsome and athletic. He was, inarguably, an imposing figure. But, guess what, he was anxious and scared and worried and insecure in quite surprising, heartbreaking ways.
So, it comes back to empathy. For him and for us. It’s kind of nice to know that Scaramanga, Lord Summerisle, Count Dooku and — hey — the greatest Count Dracula… was basically as fucked up as the rest of us.
Like the man himself, eloquently put. Thank you so much for sharing so much insight. All the best with the documentary, Jon. It’s phenomenal!
Thanks, Rich!
Follow Jon on Instagram and find out more about his projects over at jonspira.co.uk. You can also pre-order the Blu-ray via the Kickstarter campaign, including deluxe and collectors editions.
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